St. Daniel Monastery: 1000 Years of Monastic Life
Some things don't change, even in a thousand years.
The Sant Daniel Monastery in Girona, Spain is celebrating its thousandth anniversary. This is a milestone that not many institutions have the privilege of achieving. In honor of the event, the Benedictine nuns who live there have opened the monastery doors to outsiders: remembering when they entered; what inspired them to be nuns; how their families responded; and what the first years there were like. We then get a glimpse of their day-to-day lives in the 21st century, where work is balanced by prayer time and they do their very best to manage the few resources available to them. While the technological world has, perhaps, found its way into the monastery, it hasn't managed to change some of the most basic elements of life there.
This documentary reflects a type of coexistence that relatively few people in the world experience, and which is clearly becoming extinct. The Sant Daniel nuns are most likely the last to devote their lives to a monastic life. Thus, this film serves as a unique view, maybe among the last, of life as lived inside a monastery. The nuns freely share their worries, doubts, ideals, hopes, projects and disappointments as well as their joyful moments and low times. In fact, reflecting a life not so different from our own.
It is, after all, about struggling to give meaning to life which, finally, is what each and every one of us aims for, in one way or another.
The Sant Daniel Monastery in Girona, Spain is celebrating its thousandth anniversary. This is a milestone that not many institutions have the privilege of achieving. In honor of the event, the Benedictine nuns who live there have opened the monastery doors to outsiders: remembering when they entered; what inspired them to be nuns; how their families responded; and what the first years there were like. We then get a glimpse of their day-to-day lives in the 21st century, where work is balanced by prayer time and they do their very best to manage the few resources available to them. While the technological world has, perhaps, found its way into the monastery, it hasn't managed to change some of the most basic elements of life there.
This documentary reflects a type of coexistence that relatively few people in the world experience, and which is clearly becoming extinct. The Sant Daniel nuns are most likely the last to devote their lives to a monastic life. Thus, this film serves as a unique view, maybe among the last, of life as lived inside a monastery. The nuns freely share their worries, doubts, ideals, hopes, projects and disappointments as well as their joyful moments and low times. In fact, reflecting a life not so different from our own.
It is, after all, about struggling to give meaning to life which, finally, is what each and every one of us aims for, in one way or another.
